The Lo Yada-Dissociation Syndrome of the Book of Esther

The Talmud tells us Chayav adam lebasumei bepurya ad’loyadah bein baruch Mordechai le-arur Haman, “A man must drink on Purim to a level of intoxication whereby he can no longer discern between ‘Blessed is Mordechai’ and ‘Cursed is Haman.’”

The first two chapters of the book of Esther are taken up with a lengthy description of Vashti’s insubordination and the measures taken to find a replacement queen. Both Vashti’s defiance as well as the organization of the nation-wide beauty contest introduce us to a psychological motif whose existence and extent seem to have been overlooked by commentators, but which we detect as a recurring theme throughout the book. We refer to the mental condition of ‘dissociation,’ which is well-recognised in psychology, and is associated with the French philosopher and psychologist Pierre Janet (1859–1947).¹ He demonstrated that sufferers from traumatic situations or experiences find relief by an escape mechanism whereby the psyche consciously blocks out those experiences to the extent that they become ‘dissociated’ from his or her reality.

It is this condition that we detect as having affected all of the dramatis personae of the book of Esther with the exception of Mordechai, and to which we have attached the term ‘lo yada-dissociation syndrome.’ The term is derived from the 4th century CE sage Rava, who counselled that we celebrate Purim in a manner that, if taken literally, would represent a stark and unique contrast to the traditional manner of a religious celebration: ‘A man is duty-bound to drink on Purim to a level where [his mind is so befuddled that] he cannot discern (ad d’lo yada) between “Cursed be Haman” and “Blessed be Mordechai.”’²

Modern research has demonstrated a clear correlation between alcoholism and both clarity of mind and sharpness of memory.³ Given the incessant drinking that characterised everyday court life in ancient Persia – as graphically portrayed in our book – we need look no further to discover the cause of the book’s characters’ lo yada inability to function with any degree of mental clarity. The object of this study is to highlight how recognition of this syndrome helps to elucidate some episodes and explain some crucial attitudes, judgments, actions and reactions of the main protagonists.

We have suggested that the opening chapters of the book already provide two examples of this, in the matter of Vashti’s defiance and the establishment of a beauty contest in order to provide for a replacement queen. The whole episode is recounted with such seriousness and in such minute detail that all involved – Ahasuerus, Vashti, Memukhan and the king’s servants and attendants (2:2) – fail to discern (lo yada) the absurdity and incongruity of employing a beauty contest as the selection process for the prospective queen of the 127 provinces of the Persian empire! The fact that the king readily accepted the suggestion indicates the extent to which he was afflicted by that same syndrome.

In the aftermath of Vashti’s refusal to appear before the king’s invited banquet guests, the advice given to the king by Memukhan, one of the trusted members of his supreme ‘Council of Seven’ (1:14), to rid himself of Vashti, was also an example of a lo yada dissociation from reality. After all, once the banquet was concluded, and with the king restored to sobriety, the couple might well have been reconciled, with the king accepting her apology and with it her justification for her refusal to appear before a drunken rabble. Had it been a Jewish royal couple, she might well have quoted a biblical verse extolling modesty to mitigate her action: How glorious is the king’s daughter within (Ps. 45:14).

It was Memukhan’s lo yada syndrome, however, that frustrated that reconciliation through his inflation of a royal tiff into a national crime which he presented as having the potential to undermine the administrative, social and domestic order of the entire empire: Queen Vashti has committed an offense not only against Your Majesty, but also against all the officials and against all the peoples in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus. For the queen’s behaviour will make all wives despise their husbands…and there will be no end of scorn and provocation (1:16-18).

Alas poor Vashti! She never read the signs of her husband’s latent disaffection and was surprisingly oblivious – lo yada – to his total dependence upon the advice of Memukhan, as well as to the severity of the punishment that they would together concoct for that misdemeanour.

Much is made of the king’s seven advisers who were particularly involved with the search for the new queen: Karshena, Shetar, Admatah, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena and Memukhan. They also adopted an irresponsible, lo yada attitude of indifference to the Jewish identity of their future queen, that she was an adherent of a religion implacably opposed to the dualism of the state religion of Zoroastrianism. A Jewish queen would hardly have been acceptable to the nation, nor would she have been able to participate in state religious ceremonies.

The effects of the syndrome on the king – aggravated, as we have suggested, by his addiction to a life of debauchery and drunkenness – were such as to rob him of the ability to grasp the reality of the political situations confronting him or to govern such a vast empire of 127 satrapies. Hence the parlous state of his treasury’s finances and the appeal of Haman’s offer to bail him out with such a large injection of cash. It would also have rendered him totally oblivious – lo yada – to the court machinations and the moves afoot to assassinate him. This was successfully achieved in 465 BCE, the 21st year of his reign, as a result of a court coup instigated by one of his own ministers, Artabanus, with the object of installing Ahasuerus’s son, Artaxerxes, upon the throne.

The Jews of Persia were also not immune to that lo yada syndrome, expressed in their having betrayed a lack of awareness that their assimilated way of life posed a direct threat to their moral integrity and religious identity; for, if Talmudic tradition is accepted, they also participated willingly in the king’s banquets, blissfully ignoring their religious dietary laws (TB Megilla 12a). They also displayed the lo yada syndrome in their ‘lack of awareness’ – like so many other Jewish communities down the ages – that their friendly and tolerant host government might be swayed so easily, and manipulated so suddenly, by a powerful demagogue like Haman, to adopt anti-Jewish measures.⁴

The young women candidates for the hand of the king spent a year in beauty preparation before being led to spend the night in the king’s bed chamber (2:13). Following that, they were directed to the king’s harem, never to leave it again and never to return to enjoy the king’s pleasure unless they were specifically summoned by name (2:14). They were essentially in a constant state of lo yada uncertainty as to their future and their fate.

Then there was the king’s self-induced state of lo yada – a mental dissociation from an acknowledgment of the fact that Esther was Jewish. He instigated no checks; his exclusive criterion being her ability to win a beauty contest! We use the term ‘self-induced’ advisedly, given that it must have been common knowledge that she had been taken to the palace by the King’s officers directly from Mordechai’s home, which, without doubt, would have been in the Jewish Quarter of Shushan! Not only would those officers have disclosed that fact to their friends and family, but it would assuredly have been passed along the court grapevine, ultimately reaching the king’s ears even before Esther emerged as the winner of the beauty contest!

In addition, it should not be forgotten that Esther was brought to Shushan as a captive child after Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Jerusalem. It is inconceivable, therefore, that her Jewish identity would not have been apparent to all, as reflected in her features, her accent, and, most certainly, in her modest demeanour and the style of dress that a young religious Jewess would have worn. Furthermore, the fact that every single day Mordechai would walk about in front of the court of the harem to learn how Esther was faring and what happened to her (2:11) would have made it patently obvious to all that Mordechai the Jew was exhibiting a paternalistic concern for her, thereby confirming the widespread rumour regarding her religious and national identity. We must assume, therefore, that when the author – or a glossator, since it has all the hallmarks of a parenthetical gloss – inserted the previous verse, Esther did not reveal her people or her kindred, for Mordechai had told her not to reveal it (2:10), the anomaly of her Jewish identity being evident to all must have slipped his mind. In that respect, he, as well as the final editor, displayed the symptoms of a lo yada syndrome!

The lo yada mindset is doubly employed in the context of the suppression by Haman of the precise identity of the minority that he sought the king’s permission to eliminate. He consciously describes it in vague terms as a people scattered and dispersed throughout the provinces of your kingdom, whose laws are different from all others and who do not observe the king’s laws (3:8). The obvious reaction of any king would have been to inquire after the exact identity of the minority that the petitioner had in his sights, and to display curiosity as to which of his royal edicts they had ignored, and why the authorities had taken no action to date! But Ahasuerus curiously holds his peace!

Thus, this situation, wherein Haman omitted that most significant piece of information and Ahasuerus did not request it, meant that both were employing the lo yada tactic to their own advantage. Haman must have known – as most of the courtiers would have suspected – that the king was fully aware of Esther’s Jewish identity. But he also knew that he had to play along with the king’s pretence of lo yada, since it was only by hiding behind that mask of ignorance that the king could possibly have accepted Haman’s plan and his substantial financial incentive. For, had Haman openly disclosed that it was none other than Esther’s people, he would have placed his king in an impossible situation, the consequences of which most certainly would have been that he would have had to reject Haman’s request. Selling out Esther’s people would have destroyed his marriage. He had already dispensed with one queen; it would hardly have endeared him to his people to remove another, quite apart from having left him even more distracted and lonely than he had been following Vashti’s departure.

Our suggestion, that Ahasuerus knew full well that Haman’s target was Esther’s people, gains credence from the consideration that it was the king’s own edict that everyone should bow down to Haman, coupled with the fact that the king’s servants that were in the king’s gate (3:2) would inevitably have reported the fact that Mordechai the Jew was refusing to obey that royal edict and that Haman was outraged by his action. Even a lo yada sufferer like Ahasuerus would have been able to infer cause and effect!

We may wonder how it was that the king claimed not to know (lo yada) whether Mordechai had been rewarded for having saved his life (6:3). This was surprising not only because this fact was recorded in the royal chronicle (6:1), but also because there could hardly have been so many attempts on his life that he would not have recalled Mordechai’s momentous deed! We may also assume that, for such an exceptional act, the king would have expressed his personal gratitude and would have presented his reward personally and expeditiously to Mordechai.

That he did not reward Mordechai may be explained either as an act of crass ingratitude or of lo yada absent-mindedness on his and his advisors’ part. We prefer to view it, however, in the light of our above suggestion that the king adopted an ambivalent attitude towards his Jewish minority, engendered by its usefulness now as a means of alleviating the parlous state of his economy, on the one hand, and his love for Esther, on the other. His guilt feelings at having accepted Haman’s offer may well explain why he had distanced himself from Esther for the previous thirty days.

Furthermore, we may logically assume that, other than Haman, there had been no one else, during the king’s short reign to date, who had attained to the requisite rank, authority, and state and military influence, to have had the temerity to approach the king with a plan to destroy any other ethnic group in Persia. And yet, at Esther’s second private banquet with Haman and the king, where she reveals to her husband that someone had master-minded a plan to destroy her people, the king – who well knew that it was Haman – adopts that familiar lo yada guise, feigning surprise, fury and revulsion at what he was hearing: Who is he, and where is he, who dared to do this thing? (7:5).

A modern commentator well sums up the king’s mentality in words for which lo yada would be an accurate paraphrase: “Ahasuerus is a buffoon, never quite sure what to do, completely at the mercy of his ministers and servants, giving away his power without a thought.”⁵

Haman also displayed a remarkable degree of lo yada gullibility and egotistic oblivion in never imagining that his invitations to Esther’s intimate banquets were but a prelude to his being ‘unmasked,’ and, again, when asked by the king to suggest a suitable reward for someone who had rendered unique service to the crown, in never imagining that there might possibly be any potential recipient in the entire kingdom more worthy than himself.

Bigtan and Teresh, the plotters against the king’s life (2:21-23), displayed a careless lo yada unawareness of the presence of Mordechai nearby when they were hatching their secret plot to assassinate the king. TB Megilla 13b attempts to rationalise their carelessness by asserting that Mordechai – having been a former judge of the Sanhedrin, for which position a knowledge of the seventy known languages was a prerequisite – was well acquainted with the rare Persian dialect that they were employing to avoid being understood.

Esther seems to have been insulated with a double lo yada wall from what was going on both within the palace walls and outside of it. Hence, although Haman’s negotiations with the king to kill all the Jews resulted in the decree being dispatched by couriers to all the king’s provinces… who went out post haste on the royal mission (3:13-15), yet Esther remained blissfully unaware of its promulgation. Incredibly, she did not pick up so much as a whisper of that momentous decree from any courtier ministering to her within her quarters. Neither did she receive any report of the fact that the city of Shushan was dumbfounded (3:15), suggestive of the fact that the decree against the Jews was regarded as shocking even to the gentile citizens of the city.⁶

Mordechai’s firm retort to Esther is significant in the light of our discussion of the extent to which the lo yada syndrome characterises the events and characters of the book. He tells her, So, who knows (umi yode’a) whether you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis? (4:14). There is here a clear underlying implication that, although Esther may not know what is happening around her, there is a higher power – One who does indeed ‘know’ – that is directing her destiny.

Given that all the dramatis personae of the story, with the exception of Mordechai, reveal aspects of the lo yada syndrome, the phrases Vayyivada ha-davar l’Mordechai (The matter became known to Mordechai) (2:22), lada’at et shelom Esther (to acquaint himself with how Esther was faring) (2:11), and Umordechai yada et kol asher na’asah (Mordechai knew all that had happened) (4:1) may be perceived as conveying a special emphasis, hinting at the one who stood out, in contrast to all the rest, for his wisdom, astuteness and cognizance of what was at stake, and what was required to be done in order to meet the threat to his people, to the king, and to the nation, as well as for his courage and leadership.⁷

The name of the festival, Purim, and the circumstances that gave rise to that name, provide a one-word characterisation of our lo yada syndrome. Instead of carefully selecting a date for the destruction of the Jews, one that suited his and his military commanders’ plans and organisational requirements, Haman made use of the device of the pur, the drawing of lots (3:7), which would throw up a date that was arbitrary and lo yada, ‘wholly unknown,’ in advance!

Given that one of the most distinctive literary characteristics of the Book of Esther is the repetitive enumeration of the dates when each event occurred,⁸ Haman’s employment of a lo yada and arbitrary device for determining the chosen day for Jewry’s destruction stands out as curious yet significant!

Hence our conclusion that it is that lo yada syndrome – suffered by almost all the actors, and underlying most of the events, in that ‘theatre of the absurd’ called Shushan – that Rava instructs us to re-enact and ritualize by drinking ourselves into a happy and, according to rabbinic consensus, a measured⁹ state of inebriation on the festival of Purim. That notion of concealment, or dissociation from reality, is hinted at in the Talmud, where the (Persian) name Esther is explained by association with the Hebrew verb lehastir, ‘to conceal,’¹⁰ which has the identical connotation of lo yada.